Miller's sons

Miller's sons
Theon Greyjoy and the heads of the miller's sons, by theghostofpyke©
Born	North
Died	299 AC Mill by the Acorn Water
Father	Miller of Acorn Water
Mother	Miller's wife
Books	A Clash of Kings (mentioned) A Dance with Dragons (mentioned)

The miller's sons are two boys from the mill by the Acorn Water near Winterfell in the north.

Appearance

The two boys are of an age with Bran and Rickon Stark, and are reportedly similar in size and coloring, which may mean they have auburn hair.

Recent Events

A Clash of Kings

After Ser Rodrik Cassel captures "Reek", his party stops at the mill by the Acorn Water for a while before continuing to Winterfell. The miller's wife sells them hay for their horses, and Rodrik speaks with the miller's sons.

Jojen Reed has a green dream of Reek skinning off the faces of Bran and Rickon Stark, who laid dead at his feet. After Reek is brought to Winterfell and imprisoned in the dungeons, Jojen tells Bran about that green dream and others.

When Theon Greyjoy leads ironborn raiders to capture Winterfell, Bran and Rickon become his prisoners and hostages. '"Reek", freed from Winterfell's dungeons, swears himself to Theon.

Bran and Rickon apparently escape Winterfell with the help of Osha, Hodor, and Meera and Jojen Reed. Theon gathers a search party, including Reek, Maester Luwin, and the kennelmaster Farlen and his dogs, but fails to track them down in the wolfswood. However, Reek tells Theon he has a feeling that the Stark boys are hiding at the mill, and secretly presents Theon with the boys' fine clothing he had brought along in a bag. Theon sends the rest of the search party back to Winterfell, except for Reek and three ironborn, Aggar, Gelmarr, and Gynir.

At the mill, Reek kills the miller's two sons, and when their mother begs Theon for mercy, Gelmarr cuts her down with one blow of his axe. The dead children are decapitated and their heads skinned and dipped in tar by Reek, and Theon dresses their bodies in the Stark children's finery. Theon returns to Winterfell and presents the heads and headless bodies as Bran and Rickon. The people of Winterfell are shocked and horrified to see this, and Farlen attempts to attack Theon until he is beaten senseless. Maester Luwin begs to sew their heads back on and bury the bodies in the crypt of Winterfell, but Theon forbids it. Instead, he mounts their heads on the castle walls, and burns the bodies and clothing to bones and ashes.

At Riverrun, Lady Catelyn Stark receives word that Theon Greyjoy captured and killed her sons at the mill on the Acorn Water, and mounted their heads on the walls of Winterfell.

When the three ironborn who had gone to the mill with Theon and Reek die mysteriously, Theon blames Farlen and executes him. However, it was actually "Reek" who, with Theon's approval, killed Aggar, Gelmarr, and Gynir, to secure the secret of the "Stark boys'" deaths. Afterwards, Theon has a dream of dressing the dead bodies at the mill. Theon also has a nightmare that he is being chased by giant wolves with the heads of small children, while he pleads to himself that they are dead. Theon's sister Asha Greyjoy visits Winterfell and tells him he was a fool for killing Bran and Rickon and mounting their heads on the gate, as he has a made an enemy of every man for a thousand leagues, and only gives him ten men as reinforcements. "Reek" promises Theon he can get him two hundred men from the Dreadfort, and Theon allows him to leave. The next morning, Theon walks along the outer walls of Winterfell and gazes at the miller's sons' heads, thinking of how easily people were fooled.

Ser Rodrik and his army return and confront Theon outside Winterfell. Theon uses Rodrik's daughter, Beth Cassel, as a hostage, displaying her to her father standing atop the walls of the castle, between the heads of the two boys, with a noose around her neck. Rodrik is anguished, but still determined to attack. However, Reek returns with House Bolton's garrison and betrays and destroys the army attempting to retake Winterfell. Reek reveals himself to Theon as actually being Ramsay Snow, bastard son of Lord Roose Bolton, and betrays Theon as well, beginning the sack of Winterfell.

Afterwards, Bran Stark and his companions emerge from the crypts where they had been hiding, finding Winterfell in ruins and filled with dead residents and dead ironmen. They find a mortally-wounded Maester Luwin, who tells them that he knew the bodies could not have been theirs, as the older boy's leg muscles were not withered like Bran's paralyzed ones.

A Dance with Dragons

Theon, who has been tortured at the Dreadfort by Ramsay for months, finds it difficult to recall the truth of what happened to Bran and Rickon, remembering that they dipped their heads in tar.

Having returned to Winterfell for Ramsay Bolton's wedding, a regretful Theon feels that the castle is full of ghosts for him. He thinks of the old ghosts from the crypts and the younger ones that he had made himself, including the miller's wife from Acorn Water and her two young sons.

In the godswood of Winterfell, Theon sees Bran's face in the weirwood and momentarily thinks he is being haunted by his ghost, before recalling that they had not actually killed Bran and Rickon, but instead only miller's sons. He speaks aloud that he had to have two heads or he would have been mocked, and is overheard by Holly and Rowan. Rowan accuses Theon of being a kinslayer, and Theon denies any relationship to Bran and Rickon while thinking to himself that the two children he killed were just some miller's sons.

Quotes

On their iron spikes atop the gatehouse, the heads waited. Theon gazed at them silently while the wind tugged on his cloak with small ghostly hands. The miller's boys had been of an age with Bran and Rickon, alike in size and coloring, and once Reek had flayed the skin from their faces and dipped their heads in tar, it was easy to see familiar features in those misshapen lumps of rotting flesh. People were such fools. If we'd said they were rams' heads, they would have seen horns.

—thoughts of Theon Greyjoy

Luwin: Bran. And Rickon too. The gods are good. I knew...
Bran: Knew?
Luwin: The legs, I could tell... the clothes fit, but the muscles in his legs... poor lad...

—Luwin and Bran Stark

And for one strange moment it seemed as if it were Bran's face carved into the pale trunk of the weirwood, staring down at him with eyes red and wise and sad. Bran's ghost, he thought, but that was madness. Why should Bran want to haunt him? He had been fond of the boy, had never done him any harm. It was not Bran we killed. It was not Rickon. They were only miller's sons, from the mill by the Acorn Water.

—thoughts of Theon Greyjoy

Theories

It has been speculated that Theon fathered the boys, or at least the youngest one, as he bedded the miller's wife several times. However, this conjecture is disputed: Theon never considers the possibility that the children are his, which may imply that he had sex with the woman after they were already born; a proof of this may be Theon remembering "stretch marks on her belly", that could have come from childbirth.